Concorde Dessert: is not a bird, or a plane!

It´s the"Concorde, the cake"


It is one of the most delicious and memorable chocolate cakes. It was created by the renowned pastry chef Gaston Lenôtre in honor of the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Mr. Lenôtre, who passed away in 2009, has changed the pastry as it was known, for a lighter and less sweeter one. 


He´s also the creator of the famous Opera cake, meringue succes, and the school that is known worldwide.

Wishes

With this picture of my Christmas tree, obviously made ​​by my hands with some wire, paint and ornaments, I want to leave my happiest wishes for the remaining of this year and the year that is going to start.

Without further ado: HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Limequat pound cake, a potion for cold days

The last ingredient that was missing! exclaimed to myself in a supermarket. 
I was in the process of creating something different (the chicken or the egg ...), and encountered some strange fruits for my eyes. And took prey (after paying a small fee).Upon reaching the cave, small golden jewels were immersed in a bath of sugar and water in equal parts, and they were swimming around under low fire until they were tender. 


And waited, and waited, until one day, in times of snow and cold, gnashed his bowels, and there was only one answer for that in his great book (the big web with millions of recipes). This witch put them with others who were arrested from immemorial times in a big pot. And with little magical spells achieved a potion that deserves to be registered.

Gingy: Ginger and honey cookies

(Angry Gingy says: Don´t eat me!)


When the holidays arrive and we realize the year is coming to an end, we start to think about what happend during this year and put things in a scale.
My year was very good, I can´t complain. It had its sad side, by the departure of a beloved, had its joys, challenges, hopes and celebrations. The scale leaned to a positive side.


Next year, I expect surprises, as always, generally the´ll be good, so I'm waiting. 
And so in a feeling of celebration, to get into the warmth of the holidays, I made spiced cookies  with a child motif, shaped Gingy the gingerbread man from the movie Shrek.

Chocolate and cinnamon babka

Recently was looking forward to make bread, something with more dough than what I usually do.


I'll tell you  how I knew about this type of bread, Seinfeld show it was, when Jerry and Elaine are going to buy it and see that an old woman takes the last one in the store.


The babka is a brioche type bread, which comes from Eastern Europe, filled with fruit. And there is another bakba, the Jewish tradition type, which is filled with chocolate and cinnamon, sometimes topped with streusel.This is the one I´m interested about

This may not be a recipe that everyone will do, but it is very easy to prepare, it´s difficult for us to go wrong, and it´s worth, the result is spectacular.

Chocolate and dulce de leche pie

I was waiting for some dinner with friends to make this dessert. Always happens to me I want to make something that everyone would like. But, is not always easy.


Chocolate and dulce de leche, is the most common combination in Argentina. We can see this at any kiosk, with the alfajor and other candies. Also, in birthday cakes for children and adults. I don´t usually make desserts with dulce de leche, if you ask me, and I would have put berries, and/or spices... 
Well, I confess, I put a spice, but in a subtle way, that improves the taste of chocolate.

Mini lemon souffle cakes

Here's a recipe I really love, an incredibly rich, smooth, creamy and tasty, a mini lemon cake* with a hint  of orange to lower the acidity, which can serve both as a dessert for a large meal or for tea time.


It is like a souffle, and magic (or baking), the demolding seems that we had worked twice, making a cake and lemon cream.

Pear, ginger & cardamom jam

One thing that I brought for me from Villa General Belgrano was a jar of pear marmalade, and when it was out, I went for my own.


As I'm always looking for new ideas, new flavors and combinations of them, I like to use spices to change a bit the flavors, or, sometimes, herbs and dried fruits to give a new dimension to sweet tastes. I admit that sometimes I get bored quickly, but seeing the positive side, I have a curious and adventurous spirit. But enough about me.


The pears are still good looking at grocery stores and the truth that I did not exploit them much this year.

So, enough said, I made this pear and spices jam, from scratch, no recipe (incredible for my chemistry brain) that was incredibly delicious.

The Best Cocoa Nibs Brownie with Orange Ganache

This time I´ll introduce a great recipe from an excellent book, Real Chocolate by Chantal Coady, dedicated to chocolate, savory dishes, sweets, drinks, truffles, all made with chocolatem, obviously.
Chantal has a chocolate house in London, Rococo Chocolate, with a variety of amazing chocolate forms and aromas. The book has basic and advanced recipes.

One recipe that caught my attention was ganache with water...Water? Yes! The cream ganache, which we use for cakes, pie fillings, truffles, generally prepared with equal parts of chocolate and cream. But this, as she explains, uses the fat and lecithin present in the chocolate, to make an emulsion, such as when mixing oil and vinegar to make a vinaigrette.

And yo know what? It worked really well, a creamy and is not so "heavy" cream as the original. In addition, water can be flavoured with coffee, tea or juice.

Just try it!

Pavlova with pastry cream and red fruit & Happy Mother`s Day!

For me, this dessert is like a wildcard, it's easy, you won´t be much in the kitchen and it can please everyone (I hope so).

I prepared it to be eaten on Mother´s Day (here in Argentina) to my mother in law and the next day for my mother, two desserts, one time cooking. I made one with pastry cream and the other with whipped cream. I seized the yolks left to make a rich pastry cream.




Perhaps most of you are familiar with what is a Pavlova? In honor of the ballerina Anna Pavlova, and her  fluffy tutu, an unknowk chef named the dessert, a meringue base with whipped cream and red fruit filling, passion fruit and / or kiwi.


The meringue is crisp on the outside and soft inside, not like the meringue from the bakeries, which is completely crisp. Even if they wanted to make the dessert and do not want to prepare the meringue you can use bought, breaking glasses can be prepared in a little meringue and filling with cream and fruit on top.

Pfefferkuchen, spicy german cookies

When I returned from holidays, one of the first things I did, was to find the recipe for cookies that were stuck in my memory, with its aroma and texture.

I found that pepper was not an ingredient of these, but was for the mixture of spices, they call Pfeffer, for the ​​German Christmas cookies. These cookies are sisters of the Lebkuchen´s, which adorn the Christmas tree, and have the same species.

Candied ginger

Long ago, I wondered how was that in Argentina there wasn´t something as good as candied ginger, and then I realized I could prepare it myself.  And there I was.
There is no exact recipe, but it is not hard to do ir anyway..

Candied ginger can be used for many things, to add a few bits in cookies, mixed with apples for a pie, for decorating chocolate tarts, dipped in chocolate to eat as a candy, passed through sugar, well, for anything you like.

Remake of an apple, or berries, crumble

 


What is a remake? Doing it again? Or it´s more like to do the cumble in a new, easier and lighter way?
Do we need to change what is already good? Maybe not, but why not try and decide which we prefer.

I really like this because it´s really quick to make, and with a good crunch.
And the fruit? Anyone you like and is in season!
Here yo have two options: cinnamon-apple and berries

A yogurt and a yogurt cheesecake

This time I have 2 recipes to share: yogurt and yogurt cheesecake.
Yogurt? How boring! But for me it´s not, I don´t get tired of doing it, it´s really easy, ready in 5 minutes, is very rich, cheap and also low calorie. But, always a but, you have to be patient, you need 1 day to see results.

Marbled ricotta cheesecake

Don´t you hate when we do a recipe and part of package still remains? 
... What we do with this rest? Days go by, it goes bad and we have to throw it away.
To avoid this with the rest of the package of a recipe with ricotta I made a ricotta, chocolate and a hint of lemon cheesecake.

Chocolate Bavarois Cake & Rustic Cake with Season Fruit

When Christmas is on the way I always think desserts my family will like to eat, and I always arrive at any dessert with chocolate, but I have a restless spirit and usually feel bored doing the same desserts. 

So I decided to make something classic and something different: two desserts. We are going to have a cake that combines the crisp and silky with good chocolate flavor, and a more rustic cake with season fruit (summer in Argentina), a more spicy one

Chocolate and banana inverted upside down dessert with coconut cream

This is a fall dessert: bananas, chocolate, coconut and the "porteño" ingredient, dulce de leche, sweet milk or caramel milk. Usually, when I look at the name of a dessert and see that says "upside down" I feel it`s too difficult to prepare, or that I'm going to burn myself or that I´ll have to clean a lot, but this dessert is nothing like that.

I made the recipe as-is from David Lebovitz blog. I always make his banana pudding, but adding chocolate chips, it seemed perfect as a dessert for dinner with my brothers. I accompanied with a cream of coconut, which has a mild and fresh taste, and also dulce de leche, because bananas + dulce de leche is a classic pair impossible to ignore.

Plum tart, not Hermé´s way

This time I´ve decided to try a recipe from the Great Monsieur Hermé. This recipe is from his book, Larousse of Desserts, a really big book, with basic and more elaborate recipes. I chose this recipe because it seemed light, simple, and I wanted to eat plums.

This recipe I chose to try, looked really good and not so difficult, but it didn´t happen. The original recipe calls to put to plums halves on the dough and bake for 30 minutes. But after that half hour it seemed that the plums would not have passed through the oven, so I decided to change everything, remove the plums from dough and beke them on the stove top. 
It might have worked with some plums less firm. Maybe, who knows.Of course, the recipe is not like the one on the book, but the fixed version. I hope you like it!

Berry cake, it´s tea time!

Here in the southern hemisphere spring has just begun and with that, seasonal fruits. But not everything is happy. In our beloved Buenos Aires it´s not easy to get berries, perhaps in a grocery store some fresh cranberries. Actually, raspberries and blackberries are not easy to be found, but Argentina is a producer of these fruits, but we are also exporters.

Ricotta and pear muffins

I will present you the best muffins you can eat: very tasty, very moist, very rich and aromatic.

Sold? Hope yes! Because it is one of the best recipes I made recently.

And if you don´t have everything the recipe says, no problem. Below you can see the replacements.

Chocolate mini dessert (v. 2.45)

Who was not walking around late at night wanting to eat something sweet and rich? And besides that it must be not too difficult to make it or take much to be done?

Mmm, this dessert is ideal for those moments. Or for when we expect someone coming to dinner at the last minute, or we have to bring something for dessert.

These mini desserts take 3 minutes to cook, so I called 2.45, because they are cooked in the microwave. And since I'm so nerdy, I ´ll tel you why 2.45: is the frequency of the microwaves. These waves move the molecules in the oven and to sum up, they are cooked!